The Genius of Nijinsky - Beaming Across Time

The story of Nijinsky, the Polish/Russian Dancer is a tale of brilliance and despair, of innocence and stardom, celebrity, sensitivity, and tragedy, and amongst the saddest historical cases of artistic success versus mental health.

Jill Rivers was introduced to his story by filmmaker Paul Cox during the filming of the dancer’s diaries in 2001, resulting in an invitation to stay with Nijinsky’s daughter Tamara in Phoenix, Arizona. She embraced the intimacy of the opportunity to meet his family – his granddaughter Kinga and great-grandson Mark, and to explore the famous dancer’s life and its controversies. As a long-term Media Director of The Australian Ballet, she had visited the then Soviet Union with the company and was familiar with the theatres of St Petersburg, Moscow and Odesa. Her research took her to back to Russia to re-trace Nijinsky’s footsteps through the Imperial School – now the Academy of Russian Ballet – to other parts of the city connected to his life, and to Italy to meet his grandson and namesake Vaslav Markevitch. What became apparent to Rivers was that Nijinsky was way ahead of his times – at the vanguard of Western Modernism in multiple artforms – movement, literature and art. In many ways, it was his tragedy. This book traces the origin of Russian ballet and applauds Nijinsky’s genius, a century on.